After an incident at my mothers where a ~38 year old socket went bang and issued smoke and flames after being switched on, I was wondering what sort of life span one could reasonably expect from a socket or light switch?
The issue seems to have been the switch in the socket itself, hard to see what happened as it was totally covered in black soot, but the switch contacts where welded in the closed position which would seem to suggest a current overload. However all the cables where securely held with the screw terminals. All the appliances are perfectly fine as far as I can tell, it is just a 4 way gang adaptor with, TV, PVR and stereo plugged in. The PVR was in a hung state so she was turning it on/off and it all went puff when she turned it back on, and they all still work.
Odd thing is neither the fuse in the any of the plugs or the even the MCB or RCD tripped (new consumer unit about 15 years ago). Crazily she pulled the plug out the wall for which she has been given a stern telling off about,
I have replaced a whole bunch of sockets, light switches etc. as a matter of precaution (basically anything dating from before the extension was done 38 years ago) and did an insulation resistance test on the wiring in the house, a portion of which is original from late 1960's which passed fine and all the bits I looked at where in good physical condition anyway. The four way gang adaptor passes the insulation resistance test as well.
Mother is original owner of the house from new, so the entire history is known. The only thing I can think of is that it is the socket my sister dropped a toy dolls knife down the back of a plug in 3 way cube thing back in the days before sleeved pins where mandated by BS1363 sorting live to earth, but that was 30 years ago.
I am at something of a loss to know why it went bang. For the record it was a double socket made by Ashley.
One thing I did note while replacing things is a lack of sleeving on the earth in a number of the older sockets and some sockets with both lugs adjustable but no earth fly lead to the back box. I was wondering if anyone knew when these became required?
The issue seems to have been the switch in the socket itself, hard to see what happened as it was totally covered in black soot, but the switch contacts where welded in the closed position which would seem to suggest a current overload. However all the cables where securely held with the screw terminals. All the appliances are perfectly fine as far as I can tell, it is just a 4 way gang adaptor with, TV, PVR and stereo plugged in. The PVR was in a hung state so she was turning it on/off and it all went puff when she turned it back on, and they all still work.
Odd thing is neither the fuse in the any of the plugs or the even the MCB or RCD tripped (new consumer unit about 15 years ago). Crazily she pulled the plug out the wall for which she has been given a stern telling off about,
I have replaced a whole bunch of sockets, light switches etc. as a matter of precaution (basically anything dating from before the extension was done 38 years ago) and did an insulation resistance test on the wiring in the house, a portion of which is original from late 1960's which passed fine and all the bits I looked at where in good physical condition anyway. The four way gang adaptor passes the insulation resistance test as well.
Mother is original owner of the house from new, so the entire history is known. The only thing I can think of is that it is the socket my sister dropped a toy dolls knife down the back of a plug in 3 way cube thing back in the days before sleeved pins where mandated by BS1363 sorting live to earth, but that was 30 years ago.
I am at something of a loss to know why it went bang. For the record it was a double socket made by Ashley.
One thing I did note while replacing things is a lack of sleeving on the earth in a number of the older sockets and some sockets with both lugs adjustable but no earth fly lead to the back box. I was wondering if anyone knew when these became required?
